Cook's Voyage Research Articles

The Southern Ocean marine ice record of the early historical, circum-Antarctic voyages of Cook and Bellingshausen

Abstract. The circumnavigations of Cook (second voyage, 1772–1775) and Bellingshausen (1819–1821) were attempts to find any great southern land mass poleward of ∼ 50° S and consequently involved sailing for three or two summers, respectively, in polar latitudes around Antarctica. Extensive sea ice eventually blocked each voyage's southern probes, although Bellingshausen, unknowingly at the time, saw the Antarctic continent. However, these attempts meant sea ice and iceberg records from the early historical period were collected nearly simultaneously from around much of Antarctica. Here, these records are extracted from journals, analysed, and compared to each other and the modern satellite record of both forms of marine ice. They generally show an early historical period with a more northerly record of both forms of marine ice than normal for today, but to a geographically varying degree. However, the early historical period in the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean saw marine ice generally within the range of modern observations for the same time of year, but the Weddell Sea and Indian Ocean marine ice, particularly on Cook's voyage, then extended several degrees further north than in today's extreme ice years.

Rediscovery of a syntype of Chalcocopris hesperus (Olivier, 1789) (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae, Scarabaeinae), a possible specimen from Captain Cook’s first voyage round the globe (1768–1771)

Chalcocopris hesperus (originally Scarabaeus hesperus) (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae, Scarabaeinae, Dichotomiini) is a common and unmistakable dung beetle species from the Atlantic Forest of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. In 2015, a neotype was designated for its valid name based on the belief that the original type series had been lost. However, the designation was invalid for failing to comply with Article 75.3.1 of the Code. Moreover, even if it had been originally valid, the neotype would now lose its type status for we found a syntype precisely where it was originally said to be, in the material of the Joseph Banks collection, now preserved in the Natural History Museum, London. We present the evidence supporting the recognition of this specimen as a syntype and designate it as the lectotype. The specimen, from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, may have been collected by Sir Joseph Banks himself during the first Cook voyage round the world (1768–1771), but we discuss aspects that might indicate that it may actually have been caught later and by someone else. Finally, we show that Scarabaeus hesperus was fixed as the type species of Chalcocopris not in 2016, as recently argued by one of us, but in 1998 by Olivier Montreuil. The data gathered and discussed here will hopefully prove to be valuable to anyone investigating the history and type status of specimens from the Banksian entomological collection.

A question of impact: Did we underestimate the consequences of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries period of early European exploration in the Pacific?

Historical narratives on Oceania have over the last two centuries mainly focused on the second half of the eighteenth century as the significant period of first encounters between Pacific Islanders and Western explorers. However, the first crossing of the region by Fernando de Magallanes (Ferdinand Magellan) was in 1521. More importantly, it has been widely neglected that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese explorers navigated through parts of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia, making regular landfalls and contact with many islands and archipelagos. The potentially devastating consequences of these early encounters (i.e., with interpersonal violence between natives and newcomers as well as the potential introduction of new deadly diseases) are well known for islands like Guam. They possibly also influenced the cultures and traditions of other archipelagos of Oceania before the better known voyages of Cook, La Perouse, and others more than 150 years later. Drawing on historical data and the scarcely available archaeological evidence, this paper aims to show that there is an urgent need to reconsider the early phase of Pacific-Western contacts as a key period in the shaping of the “traditional” indigenous cultural behaviors in parts of Oceania. This assessment has the potential to profoundly change our understanding of the ethnographical observations of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that have been produced and used in the last two centuries to define a baseline of the beginning of Western impacts on Indigenous societies in the region.

Reports of the Cook voyages in the Hamburgischer Correspondent

ABSTRACTThe beginnings of a racialised order in Oceania, and of German involvement in such, reach back a long way. In this article, the author traces elements of this racialisation back to the years before the first formal European settlement on the Australian continent. She examines important aspects of the German journalistic reception of James Cook’s voyages to the Pacific by focusing on one particularly highly networked and very widely distributed newspaper and its reporting in the period 1768–1787. She uses this to show how the editors, and especially London-based German-speaking correspondents, consciously leveraged an Anglophilia that was typical of the Hanseatic city of Hamburg in a way that encouraged their German-speaking readers, wherever they might be, to closely identify with British exploration and even claim ownership of these events themselves. Anglophilia and the German-language reporting of the Cook voyages, therefore, supplied raw materials for an entangled sense of imperial identity.

Artefacts of Encounter: Cook's Voyages, Colonial Collecting and Museum Histories ed. by Nicholas Thomas et al.

Artefacts of Encounter: Cook's Voyages, Colonial Collecting and Museum Histories ed. by Nicholas Thomas et al.

Who discovered the emperor penguin? A historical survey from James Cook to Robert F. Scott

ABSTRACTThe emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) is an iconic Antarctic species. George Robert Gray attributed the first description to Johann Reinhold Forster during James Cook's voyage of 1772–1775, attribution that persists to this day. Gray therefore honoured Forster in the emperor's scientific name—but he was almost certainly mistaken. Thaddeus von Bellingshausen in 1820 was probably the true first observer. Charles Wilkes in 1840 was next. James Clark Ross in 1841 made important observations and brought specimens home to the British Museum. Edward Wilson and others, in 1902–1903 and 1911 on the two expeditions of Robert F. Scott, discovered and investigated the first breeding colony, substantially advancing knowledge about this remarkable creature.

Changes in Stomatal Density over Time (1769–2015) in the New Zealand Endemic TreeCorynocarpus laevigatusJ. R. Forst. & G. Forst. (Corynocarpaceae)

Abstract In the Northern Hemisphere several studies have used historic herbarium specimens to examine change in stomatal density over time as related to changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration. In this study we compared stomatal density of leaves of the New Zealand endemic tree Corynocarpus laevigatus (karaka), collected by Banks and Solander on Cook's first voyage to the South Pacific in 1769–1770, with nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century material of the same species. Historical eighteenth- and nineteenth-century herbarium specimens were found to have a significantly higher stomatal density than that seen in twentieth- and twenty-first-century material. Our data are consistent with there being a relationship between stomatal density in leaves of C. laevigatus and atmospheric CO2 concentration over time. To date it is unclear whether other New Zealand native tree species show a similar relationship.

Metropolitan Scurvy in the Shadow of the Cook Voyages

ABSTRACTRecent scholarship on scurvy in 18th-century Britain has focused on the disease in the context of voyages of exploration, especially those bound for the Pacific Ocean. Using materials from quack physicians, print culture and popular song, this essay contends that the problem of scurvy was just as acute in metropolitan London and elsewhere in Britain. By studying representations of the disease and its markets at home in Britain, it aims to shed new light on the treatment and perception of the disease at sea, particularly during the voyages of James Cook (1768‒79).

Origin and timing of New Zealand's earliest domestic chickens: Polynesian commensals or European introductions?

Human settlers transported chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) to most East Polynesian archipelagos between AD 1000 and 1300; however, it has long been assumed that New Zealand was an exception. Despite the fact that chicken bones have been recovered from localities of early archaeological middens in New Zealand, their age and genetic relationships have never been critically assessed. Here, we test the assumption that chickens were not introduced to New Zealand during prehistory through ancient DNA and radiocarbon analyses of chicken bones from sites of Māori middens containing prehistoric material. The chickens belong to the widespread mitochondrial control region haplogroup E. Radiocarbon dating reveals that the bones are not prehistoric, but are still the earliest chicken remains known from New Zealand. Two of the bones pre-date permanent European settlement (ca 1803s onwards) but overlap with the arrival of James Cook's second voyage (1773–1774), and, therefore, they are likely to be chickens, or progeny thereof, liberated during that voyage. Our results support the idea that chickens were first introduced to New Zealand by Europeans, and provide new insights into Māori uptake and integration of resources introduced during the early post-European period.

Five unpublished manuscripts of Johann Reinhold Forster (1729–1798) in the archives of the Linnean Society of London

The texts concerned, all in the hand of Johann Reinhold Forster (1729–1798) and hitherto unremarked, have recently been transcribed and translated from the original Latin and have been made freely available on the website of the Linnean Society of London. Together they touch on many aspects of Forster's life and work, comprising a catalogue of North American animals, a fragmentary list of birds from the same area, “Description of 36 animals found during Capt. Cook's 2nd voyage … 1772–75”, a list of insects (British and North American), and a letter to Linnaeus on botanical matters which includes a description of Forstera sedifolia. Together they confirm Forster's impressive range of expertise, both as a naturalist and a linguist, and add weight to the movement that has in recent years sought to re-establish him in his rightful place as a major figure in eighteenth-century natural history.

Political Discussions Onboard HMS Crocodile: David Samwell, James King, and the Historical Implications for Captain Cook's Third Voyage

James King and David Samwell wrote two of the most important journals of Captain James Cook's third voyage and later produced the most important eighteenth-century publications describing the controversial circumstances of Cook's death. This article presents previously unpublished excerpts from Samwell's letters describing political discussions between the two onboard HMS Crocodile in 1781, a period during which King was revising his voyage journal toward publication as volume three of A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean. With a crew that included at least twelve Cook veterans who, according to Samwell, found ‘no small satisfaction in talking over the eventful history of our voyage’, the Crocodile may have served as crucible for arguing and reassessing the conflicting oral histories and interpretations of the third voyage: a process with potentially significant effects on King's presentation of events in A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (1784) and on Samwell's later response in The Death of Captain Cook (1786).

Beth Fowkes Tobin. The Duchess's Shells: Natural History Collecting in the Age of Cook's Voyages.

Beth Fowkes Tobin. The Duchess's Shells: Natural History Collecting in the Age of Cook's Voyages.

Hardly Pacific

American culture has long associated the nineteenth-century U.S. frontier with episodes of violent death and random bloodshed. But what about the vast watery expanse west of the West? The Pacific Ocean contains its own violent past, especially during the period stretching from Captain James Cook's historic voyages to the California Gold Rush. The nature and degree of this violence stemmed not merely from contact relations between indigenous communities and newcomers, but more specifically from commercial desires, the diffusion of diseases, and the great hunt for marine mammals. Historicizing this violent past remains an imperative for new studies of the Pacific.

The Duchess's shells: natural history collecting in the age of Cook's voyages

The Duchess's shells: natural history collecting in the age of Cook's voyages

The folio issues of the Forsters’ Characteres Generum Plantarum (1775 and 1776): a census of copies

ABSTRACTThe Characteres Generum Plantarum of Johann Reinhold Forster and Georg Forster was the principal printed botanical work emanating from James Cook's second voyage of 1772–1775. The printing most frequently encountered is a 31.2 cm quarto dated 1776 that was probably run off in several hundred copies. A single 1775 quarto was recently discovered. Also produced was a well-known but very rare 47.5 cm folio. In this first-ever census of folio copies, two dated 1775 and 14 dated 1776 are verified; their locations, descriptions, and provenances are detailed herein.

Crafty Sailors, Unruly Seas: Margaret Cohen’s Oceanic History of the Novel

CRAFTY SAILORS, UNRULY SEAS: MARGARET COHEN'S OCEANIC HISTORY OF THE NOVEL Novel and by Margaret Cohen. Translation/Transnation, edited by Emily Apter. Princeton, NJ: University of Princeton Press, 2010. Pp. xiii + 306, 30 illustrations. $39.50 cloth.Maritime studies, as traditionally practiced by naval historians and marine archaeologists, concentrates its efforts on battles, cargoes, and coastal events. But more recent development of an interdis-ciplinary oceanic studies has sought to place continental issues in background, focusing instead on space between departure and arrival. Part of argument for oceanic studies is that experience of being voyaging culture indelibly marks other-terrestrial-expressions, such as national philosophies, literature, and art. However, until recently, as Hester Blum argues, [t]he oceans comprise realm in which cultural exchange, whether dominant, resistant, or just circulatory, has not been of primary concern in its own terms-that is, independent of seas' function as passage for travel.1 Still developing as field, practitioners try to understand importance of oceanic space and history to modern culture; particular experience of maritime laborers, passengers, and captives; and significance of transported and transplanted people, crops, and animals to biological and ecological environments. Margaret Cohen's recent monograph Novel and (2010), relatively early in this fluid discipline, makes strong case for value and promise of oceanic literary studies.This ambitious book can be separated into two broad hemispheres that contain main argument, and an Interlude. first main section examines early modern period and longish eighteenth century to 1824. second covers roughly 1824 to early 1900s but concludes looking toward twentieth century and beyond. intervening Interlude is concerned with developments during long Romantic period.The book opens with two lengthy chapters, The Mariner's Craft and Remarkable Occurrences at and in Novel, and slight third, Sea Adventure Fiction, 1748-1824? which examine early modern treatises on seamanship and narratives written following Captain James Cook's voyages as precursors to Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and eighteenth-century maritime adventure novel. Cohen imaginatively and convincingly proposes relationship between technical and traditional lore of pragmatic seafarer, his and influence of maritime fiction and nonfiction on development of novel over eighteenth century. By reproducing rational logic of early modern sea narrative, maritime adventure novel produces what Cohen calls cunning reader (79), who imaginatively enters voyage narratives, novels, and explorers' reports to enact readerly mariner's craft, or a poetics of problemsolving (86).The Interlude, titled The Sublimation of Sea, addresses fascination with sublime that for many characterizes long Romantic period from Milton to Byron. This chapter's sublimation insists on depopulation of sea as it is reimagined by poets as an empty aesthetic space devoid of craft. Cohen provides compelling readings of Milton, Byron, and-especially welcome-John Falconer's long poem Shipwreck (1762), as well as reviewing aesthetic works of Edmund Burke, Lord Shaftesbury, Joseph Addison, and John Baillie. contrast of Dutch maritime genre painting with Turner's later works is particularly rewarding. However, her assertion that during the eighteenth century, qualification of sublime was increasingly applied by philosophers and writers to ocean cut off from work (115) is incomplete. Cohen does not read nautical panegyrics of Edward Young that sought to render mercantile achievement in terms of aesthetic sublimity or renewed popularity of georgic during period. …

The date of publication of the Forsters' Characteres Generum Plantarum revisited

The Characteres Generum Plantarum of J.R. Forster and G. Forster incorporates many of the botanical discoveries made during Captain Cook's second voyage to the Pacific (1772–1775). Copies of this book dated 1775 and 1776 are known, and since the 1970s the 1775 folio copies have been regarded as the effective publication for taxonomic purposes. From newer evidence it is concluded that the rare 1775 copies do not constitute effective publication, which occurred only with the quarto edition in 1776. The generic name Griselinia J.R. Forst & G. Forst. is therefore not effectively published. Griselinia G. Forst. is a later homonym of Griselinia Scop. and a previously rejected proposal to conserve it should be revived. The association of the Forsters with the family name Griseliniaceae is shown to be erroneous.

‘By cruel foes oppress'd’: British naval draughtsmen in Tahiti and the South Pacific in the 1840s

This paper considers little-known imagery made by mid-nineteenth century naval officers travelling in the Pacific, which has often been overlooked by art historians. In particular, it examines landscape drawings and prints made by officers travelling on a sequence of voyages through Polynesia, and argues that these need to be understood within the specific context of Anglo-French imperial rivalry in the region focused on the French annexation of Tahiti in the early 1840s. Rather than being simply a transparent set of tourist souvenirs, the views produced by the British officers were self-consciously reiterative, both of each other and also of a genre of exploration imagery deriving from James Cook's seminal Pacific voyages of 1768–1780. As such, they perpetuate and naturalize an image of the islands as tied to a positivist and teleological account of British imperial history, in which the French presence on Tahiti is presented as invasive, aberrant and despotic. Taking these drawings and prints as a case study, it concludes that the mass of similar imagery lying ignored in local and national archives needs to be reviewed as meriting serious art-historical scrutiny.

The contribution of Thomas Pennant (1726–1798), Welsh naturalist, to the Australian ornithology of Cook's first voyage (1768–1771)

Thomas Pennant – Welsh traveller, antiquary, naturalist, and author – visited Joseph Banks in September 1771 shortly after Banks returned from his voyage around the world (1768–1771) with James Cook. It was almost certainly on the occasion of this visit that Pennant was given access to manuscript descriptions of various birds and other animals that had been met with on the voyage, saw the specimens Banks had brought back to England, and was given some of them. Among the Pennant papers in the National Library of Wales is a collection of descriptions in Pennant's handwriting that relate to birds met with by Banks on Cook's voyage. These descriptions may be only part of what was once a more extensive collection in that regard. Of especial interest and importance among them are those of 13 Australian landbird species. Some years later, Pennant must have noticed that John Latham, in his monumental A general synopsis of birds (1781–1785), had not described some species that Pennant possessed specimens or descriptions of, or that Latham's information about some of those he described was deficient in certain respects. Pennant communicated descriptions and notes on those birds to Latham, most notably in relation to several landbirds that had been collected in eastern Australia by Banks in the course of his voyage with Cook. It is apparent from the sources discussed in this paper that Banks took more specimens of Australian birds back to England from the first Cook voyage than has previously been realised. It is a strange quirk of history that, today, more evidence in that regard is available from Pennant, who did not go on the voyage, than from Banks who did.

How chiefs became kings: divine kingship and the rise of archaic states in ancient Hawai'i

In How Chiefs Became Kings, Patrick Vinton Kirch addresses a central problem in anthropological archaeology: the emergence of whose distinctive feature was divine kingship. Kirch takes as his focus the Hawaiian archipelago, commonly regarded as the archetype of a complex chiefdom. Integrating anthropology, linguistics, archaeology, traditional history, and theory, and drawing on significant contributions from his own four decades of research, Kirch argues that Hawaiian polities had become states before the time of Captain Cook's voyage (1778-1779). The status of most archaic states is inferred from the archaeological record. But Kirch shows that because Hawaii's kingdoms were established relatively recently, they could be observed and recorded by Cook and other European voyagers. Substantive and provocative, this book makes a major contribution to the literature of precontact Hawaii and illuminates Hawaii's importance in the global theory and literature about divine kingship, archaic states, and sociopolitical evolution.